Libby boy's yard sale raises almost $1,400 for cancer support group
Hunter Rooney shows off the money and checks generated in the early hours of his yard sale at his aunt’s house in Libby Friday. The proceeds will benefit Wings Regional Cancer Support, which his late grandmother Connie Wood co-founded. (John Blodgett/The Western News)
Karen Stickney gives her grand-nephew Hunter Rooney a thumbs-up for raising $1,386.14 to benefit cancer victims and their families. (Courtesy photo)
Thanks to the generous spirit of a nine-year-old Libby boy, what could have been a typical yard sale raised almost $1,400 for the cancer support group his great-grandmother co-founded.
“He’s been bitten by the Wings bug,” Jill Rooney said of her son, Hunter.
Hunter’s great-grandmother Connie Wood co-founded the nonprofit Wings Regional Cancer Support in 1995 to help northwest Montana cancer patients and their families pay for travel expenses associated with treatment.
“Wings has always been a family thing,” Rooney said.
Hunter lost his great-grandmother to cancer in 2013 — and then his grandmother, Diana Rooney, in 2017.
“Every time I lose a family member, pet or not, it smashes my heart into itty bitty bits,” Hunter said Friday, a couple hours into the first day of the two-day event at his aunt Brenna Rooney’s home on Minnesota Avenue. “This yard sale makes me feel 100 percent again.”
The family’s plan was to hold a typical, summertime yard sale, until Hunter pledged all his proceeds to Wings.
Then the rest of family “all jumped on board,” said Brenna Rooney.
“We all just kind of started going through stuff and it snowballed from there,” said Jill Rooney.
As family members collected items for sale, word spread to friends and even strangers. Donated goods came piling in.
The yard sale was advertised in The Western News, promoted on Facebook and pointed out by signs posted in Brenna Rooney’s neighborhood.
The yard sale was set to start 9 a.m. Friday, but opened at 8 a.m. when people started showing up. Within the first two hours, Hunter was able to realize his initial goal of $200 in sales.
“I always wanted to hit a big Hail Mary in money for Wings, and I think I just did,” Hunter said.
Items Hunter himself put up for sale included blowing bubbles, Hot Wheels cars and an electronic version of Yahtzee.
Every sale made him “20 percent happier.”
“This yard sale can make a really big difference for a lot of people,” he said.
Hunter was a natural salesman, encouraging purchases, negotiating prices and offering free bottled water to shoppers.
“People were just coming and giving him money without buying stuff,” Jill Rooney said.
Over two days the sale raised $1,386.14, an amount Hunter handed to his great-aunt Karen Stickney — Connie Wood’s daughter and Wings’ board member and treasurer.
This year wasn’t the first time Hunter has contributed to Wings. Last year he donated a piggy bank containing “at least” $100.
“Every time I donate, I feel happy,” Hunter said.